Chatbots Are Leading Hikers Astray, With Dangerous Consequences

Three hikers who partly relied on Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini called for help after a series of dangerous decisions on Mount Shasta in Northern California. Officials say other visitors have also used AI tools to make poor choices in wild places, while it remains unclear whether rising AI use will increase backcountry accidents or rescues.

Bad decisions on Mount Shasta

By the time the three 20-year-olds called for help from a rocky face, they had not brought enough food, had overestimated their fitness, and summited at 7:30 pm before descending in the dark. They later admitted their lack of preparation and poor planning came partly from relying on Gemini. By morning, one hiker had injured his knee and the group was lost on a difficult part of the mountain.

Nick Meyers, US Forest Service program manager of the Mount Shasta Wilderness Climbing and Avalanche Center, said the hikers did try to research their trip but “kind of turned their brains off.” His team also encountered a visitor who pitched a tent near a “No Camping” sign, insisting she had a right to do so because AI told her she could, and a man at a trailhead with an AI-generated map that showed prominent features on the wrong side of a nearby mountain.

Other rescues and rising AI use

In British Columbia, a helicopter crew rescued a 16-year-old hiker from a ledge in the Widowmaker Arete on the back of Crown Mountain. The teen had used Anthropic’s chatbot Claude to help plan the trip, though he later said he also consulted Google Maps and the hiking app AllTrails. At Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, Superintendent Chip Jenkins said the share of visitors reporting AI use for travel information rose from zero to 26 percent over the past year.

Meyers said his office averages a dozen rescues each year, and 2026 is shaping up to be an average year. Calls to search and rescue in Wyoming have gone down compared with 2025, with 312 calls so far in 2026 compared with 466 in 2025 and 377 in 2024. Some search and rescue veterans say AI chatbots are just the latest tools giving people new ways to get into trouble, following earlier reliance on social media, Google Maps, or smartphone connectivity.

Risks of “cognitive surrender”

Chris Flathmann, a human-centered computing professor at Clemson University who has studied AI and search and rescue, said chatbots can hallucinate by persuasively presenting misinformation as real. Their use can also lead to “cognitive surrender,” in which people stop thinking critically for themselves, he said. When an AI system pretends to be an expert on an unfamiliar topic, users may not have the expertise to challenge it, and it can be hard to resume critical thinking in a stressful backcountry situation.

Chatbots also tend to tell users what they want to hear with authority, regardless of whether their sources are reliable, Flathmann and others said. Claude or ChatGPT might produce extensive directions that sound credible but are scraped from Reddit threads and out-of-date YouTube videos, and might even be entirely fabricated. Flathmann said AI tends to offer instructions, right or wrong, as well as encouragement, rather than just inspiration.

Checking information before going out

Experts advise people heading to a new place to double-check information against reliable, authoritative sources such as up-to-date public-land agency maps and websites, trail association websites, or guidebooks. Even better, they say, is to talk to a real-live guide, a national forest official, or a park ranger. Meyers said, “If you’re going to go into places that will kill you, you should take your planning seriously.”

Sources: Wired